


This Big Hush

by AdelaCathcart



Category: Frasier (TV)
Genre: Absolutely Not a Joke, Anorexia, Cunnilingus, Emotional Abuse, F/M, Femdom, Jungian Archetypes, Married Sex, PWP, Romance, Snob Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-24 06:06:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20701166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdelaCathcart/pseuds/AdelaCathcart
Summary: She’s an acquired taste, to be sure, but to a sophisticated palate anything less would be a bore. At least that’s what he tells himself when he’s on his knees.





	This Big Hush

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by "This Big Hush" by Shriekback, "You're Not Good Enough" by Blood Orange, and a Redditor who said if there's an exception to Rule 34 it must be Maris Crane. NOT ANYMORE IT ISN'T.

Her face is gaunt and she smells like acetone. She’s never been beautiful, not really, but beauty would cheapen her rare charm. She’s like an exotic animal too frail and inbred to live except as a pet, and the man who keeps her must therefore be extraordinary. The everyday indignities her maintenance incurs are nothing to him but the tithe he pays to have her, not that he values his dignity much where she’s concerned, when his abasement gives her so much pleasure. She’s an acquired taste, to be sure, but to a sophisticated palate anything less would be a bore. At least that’s what he tells himself when he’s on his knees.

He had almost greeted her cheerily, might even have risked a hug—he tries to present an upbeat affect to counteract her bouts of melancholy—when a slight tightness in the muscles around her right eye sent a flood of ice water through his veins. She was perched demurely on the chaise longue with her legs crossed at the ankles, wrapped in the antique silk furisode she wears as a dressing gown, fresh from her bath, and he’d thought she was utterly absorbed in oiling the épée on her lap, but he now sees she’s pointedly ignoring him, and the lusty “Maris, darling” dies half-formed in his mouth with a croak. At last her eyes slither up him, the barest hint of a sneer twisting her thin upper lip to reveal her enchanting underbite. His head swims. Panic. He has to remind himself to inhale.

“Did you forget something, Niles?” 

How could he be so stupid?

“The piano tuner,” he whispers so he doesn’t wail. 

“Imagine my humiliation this morning when Evgeny asked to hear the piece from Les Sylphides I’ve been practicing, and before I could play even a bar he was cringing from the pain. The C-sharp minor was a B-flat at least. Evgeny has perfect pitch, you know. Why, he practically _fled_ the rear parlor, swearing he wouldn’t give me another lesson until the Bösendorfer was properly serviced! He said Chopin was rolling in his grave. I was forced to close the lid myself,” she adds, holding up her brittle wrists to show the strain it caused her. “Need I remind you it was your little sauce-making fad last week that raised the humidity in the back of the house to begin with?”

A spasm of rage pinches his gut and he tamps it down, wanting to keep his temper long enough to fix this for her before tears can come, his or hers, but his eyes are already stinging and the back of his throat aches. _It’s not fair_, he thinks, like a child. _I only forgot. It was just a mistake._ But before his anger can swim to the surface a leviathan swallows it whole.

“Evgeny sees Marilee Pfaff on Tuesdays after me, and I know he’s going to tell her all about it, and won’t she be pleased to spread it to the rest of the symphony board just as soon as she possibly can. And then everyone will know the squalor we live in.”

Shame knocks him off his feet. 

“Maris, I’m sorry,” he says, slowly shaking his head. “I’ll call a piano tuner right now, the 24-hour place in Ravenna. You’ll be playing Les Sylphides in perfect C-sharp before you know it. And you’ll have a make-up lesson tomorrow, I’ll call Evgeny myself and arrange it, and I’ll make sure he knows what happened today was entirely my fault. I’m such a fool.”

“You have been something of a disappointment,” she agrees coolly, “but don’t bother. Marta already took care of it. Fortunately there’s at least one competent member of this household.”

The épée is still balanced on her knees, and he considers pulling his shirt and singlet up over his head with a jerk, baring his back for the blow that would prove his devotion. He allows himself to visualize the sudden pain of it, the slender streak of blood that would assuage her and bring them back into alignment, his fault paid for in full with only a moment’s debasement. _Punish me and let this be over,_ he thinks as he crawls to her.

At her feet he sits back on his haunches to stare up at her miserably, eyes wide as he can make them, willing sincerity to shine from his open face. “Please, Maris, I can’t bear to know I’ve let you down. I’ll make it up to you, I swear it. I never should’ve agreed to write another article for the New England Journal of Medicine, I know it’s taking up too much of my attention, and I’ve neglected you, I know that. I was irresponsible. I regret it more than I can say. I swear I will do better.”

Her fingertips on his cheek are clammy and blueish, up close he recognizes her face has the blurred look of Valium. “You never will,” she says serenely. “God knows I’ve tried to improve you. I educated you and dressed you, I introduced you to the best people. But you’ll never really be good enough, will you? Upper middle class at best. You’re gauche. You embarrass me.” She strokes his head and he closes his eyes, letting her guide him to lean against her knee like a dog. He gives a long exhale, relishing the feeling of her hand smoothing his fine hair, her square-tipped manicure grazing his scalp, absolving him. “But no one will know what you did.” 

Reaching over him to put the épée back in its case, languid and nonchalant, she continues. “You remember those awful German delivery men, tracking smut all over the house, and what a noise they made too, when they brought in that lovely Marc Quinn last week? Marta will say they collided with the Bösendorfer, which they very nearly did in fact, and that’s why it needs tuning. I hope she remembers to mention it was a Quinn. Marilee adores his work of course.” 

She pauses pointedly so Niles can thank her.

He presses his mouth to her knee in gratitude. She parts her legs slightly so the furisode falls open, exposing white flesh, almost dazzlingly stark against her black La Perla slip. A glimpse of blue vein beneath the translucent skin makes him swoon. _An heiress,_ he thinks dumbly. _An aristocrat. A princess. She would allow me to kiss the hem of her garment._ So he does.

Cautiously, he peels the slip back at the slit by her left hip, careful not to let his touch call attention to the little bloom of cellulite there, because he knows if he does he won’t see her again tonight. Fortunately a dreamy half-smile is frozen on her cadaverous face, the livid tissue-paper of her eyelids fluttering slightly, with pleasure he hopes. He works his lips over her inner thigh, and she inclines her knee away from him so he can keep moving inward, bathing his face in the humidity under her skirt, the antiseptic fragrance of her herbal bath, and a piercing note of civet and battery acid. Every inch of her below the neck is freshly waxed, and he can see that the crux of her thighs is slick and shiny with glycerine—moisturizer? Or lubricant?

With a jolt he realizes she anticipated this. Did she plan it? He knew she’d wanted the piano tuned, but _was_ it his responsibility to make the call? She never asked him to, but shouldn’t he have guessed? Could a pot or two of Espagnole really affect the humidity of the whole back of the house? Why is he always so quick to accept fault, to apologize, to beg? 

Does it matter, if it gets them here? 

She’s spread her legs as much as she’s able to, so he twists at the shoulders to reach her—what’s a cramped neck, really, if he can give her this?—and the tip of his tongue delicately splits the seam her prudish posture had pressed together. He can tell by the sound of her breath that she’s still smiling. She rests one foot on his thigh as he kneels before her, where his hand loosely holds her ankle; a cruel fist in his hair pulls him to her greedily. It’s enough encouragement for him to give his whole mouth to her, the entire surface of his tongue caressing her, even as her other heel digs into his clavicle, warning him not to overdo it. As always, he keeps his hands to himself.

It takes patience with her. It takes precision. A less meticulous man could never understand, but he takes pride in his work; he’s a healer and was made to serve. He tastes her orgasm rushing up just in time to brace himself for the violent bucking of her pubis on his upper lip, her thighs clamp around his ears so all he knows is the roar of his own blood and the wet sounds that resonate in his skull. A cramp seizes his jaw as he holds his tongue still for her to stroke herself on, all the time minding his teeth so she can ride his face until she’s done, and he lets the pain flow through him, only proud to endure it. _A few moments more. I can do this for her._

Finally she releases him and they both fall back, now in unison, the look between them dark, open and desperate. Niles’ eyes are locked on hers as he inventories his hurts, knowing she’ll want to see him lick his swollen mouth, massage the stiffness in his neck and jaw. He’s reaching to undo his slacks, ready to show her everything she’s done to him, when she scrambles down from the chaise longue, a saint descending from the altar to bless her acolyte. She’s not strong, but she is quick, and as cool kisses pour like benedictions on his sweaty face, she snatches his cock out of his fingers and slips it into her.

Her mouth’s chemical taste is almost floral. He folds one arm snugly around her hips and lifts them both from the floor onto the Daniel Marot footstool, her still straddling his lap, staring at him fiercely, all that ravenous need she carries around now uncorked and boring into him, little claws digging into the sides of his face. All the time she’s bouncing on him rhythmlessly, all urgency, no art, and all the restraint he had a moment ago is close to spent. “I can’t—“ he begs her, “I—“

“Of course you can’t,” Maris coos, and her voice is affectionate but rich with condescension. “Go on then.”

Niles buries his face in her neck, spurting into her madly, as his intellect drops out from under him. There’s nothing to justify now, nothing to explain, just her heat and her softness, skin sticky with lotion, the little body rocking in his arms, his dumb gratitude as a beauty beyond the reach of the mere rational breaks over him, the cosmic egg cracks open, and melts him into nothingness. 

A profound, eternal silence. The blindness of the womb. As one, forever, no beginning and no end. _In the beginning was the word._

Cold ambient air washes over his damp genitals as she disengages herself, and he blinks back vertigo, struggling to return his consciousness to the confines of his body. Her expression is smug as she hops on one foot to pull on a slipper, bracing herself against his arm like he’s furniture, shrugging the furisode back over her shoulders. She kisses his lips and mutters “it’s late, darling,” and in his peripheral vision she mounts the stairs and turns the corner that leads to their bedrooms. He hears her door open. He doesn't hear it shut.

He puts his feet up for a moment to rest his rug-burned knees. Then he gets up to fix her a tray, with mineral water and a sleeping pill, before she has to ask for it.


End file.
